It’s teaser season for Path of Exile 2. Here are all the teasers for Path of Exile 2’s big content update coming later this month.
Over the past couple of weeks, Grinding Gear Games has been releasing a variety of teasers. This includes a lot of smaller changes like more new and returning Unique Items, all the way up to teasing upcoming Ascendancies.
Table of contents
New Ascendancy Classes
Currently, only two new Ascendancy have been directly teased, and they are for the Mercenary and Warrior. The only things given here are an image (shown below) and flavor text to go with it.
Mercenary
“Countless wars have left you with skills somewhat resembling a decent officer…”
This appears likely to be a new Minion-focused Ascendancy, as the image shows him commanding another soldier into combat. It may also just be another supportive Ascendancy similar to that of the Chronomancer.
Only time will tell, and until we have the full Ascendancy Name and Skill Tree available, we won’t know for sure what to expect out of it. Once we do, we’ll be sure to cover it in more depth.
As part of this teaser, they also said Ascendancy Classes, so it seems like a high chance of our current 6 classes all getting their third Ascendancy Class.
Warrior
“You hunger for power, and by force of arms, you will take it.”
This new Ascendancy for the Warrior seems to be heavily focused on their Weapons. While we don’t have an official name just yet, we suspect this Ascendancy will be called either Weapon Master or Armsmaster.
From this image and the weapons present in it, it’s likely to be heavily focused on Swords and Axes, which may also be added alongside Spears for the Huntress. If this is the case, this Ascendancy will be the primary way to use them initially, as they lack a ton of support on the Passive Tree.
Regardless, opening more Weapon types up to Warriors in general will have a good impact on them.
New Class: Huntress
Coming with Update 0.2.0, also known as the Dawn of the Hunt, comes our seventh class, The Huntress.
The Huntress is another Dexterity-based character, sharing a starting area with Ranger. While sharing a starting area with Ranger seems like a bad thing for a character that will be predominately melee, much like other starting areas, many of the passives here will change to better fit this character’s early skills and needs.
Outside of coming with a Spear and its respective skills, and likely her selection of Spirit and Buff skills to be added to the overall pool, we don’t really have much information on the Huntress just yet. We expect to see a lot of these upcoming skills in the Devstream on March 27th.
New Support Gems
So far, seven new Support Gems have been showcased: Derange, Volcanic Eruption, Embitter, Concoct, Commiserate, Battershout, and Perfection. All of these are focused on buffing up some skills that are sorely lacking in their support.
Embitter
Embitter is an interesting Support Gem with a lot of potential to it. When linked to a skill, all “Gain as Extra” modifiers will be converted to Cold.
This can allow some crazy stacking of both passives and Weapon Affixes for a huge damage increase for Cold Skills. This also can allow of lot of skills a high chance to Freeze, which can also be potent.
Derange
Derange is a much-needed Support for Damage Over Time Skills that don’t rely on Ailments. This, in particular, will benefit builds like our Essence Drain Infernalist, as Essence Drain is easily one of the skills that will use this the best.
There are not many other skills outside of the Chaos DoT skills that can use this. However, with Chaos DoT being fairly weak at the moment, this boost of damage is greatly welcomed.
Volcanic Eruption
Volcanic Eruption supports Melee Strike Skills, creating a Volcanic Eruption that spits out Fire Projectiles when hitting Ignited Enemies. These fall and deal a bit of AoE Fire Damage on impact.
Vocanic Eruption will be good in combination with Herald of Ash, allowing for quick and easy Ignites to enable it. Though the skill options for Strike Skills are still exceptionally limited. It still can be a decent include for our Warrior Leveling Build, which utilizes Bone Shatter.
Concoct
Concoct is a fairly potent buff to Bleed Magitude, but it comes at the cost of Life Flask Charges. The interesting part of this increase is that being “More Bleeding Magnitude” means it will multiply any other bonuses to Bleeding we get.
With an Ultimate Life Flask or higher and the highest tier modifier to increase Maximum Charges, we can reach a maximum of 125 Charges, which results in around a bonus of 50% More Bleeding Magnitude. Combined with Deep Cuts, these two support alone will more than double (125%) any Bleeding Magitude we get from other sources if we max out Concoct.
Commisirate
Commisirate is an interesting Support gem that increases our Ailment Magnitude if we’re afflicted with the same Ailment. This will also consume the Ailment applied to us, acting as a way to cleanse the ailment.
With Poison being a pretty common Ailment to see in the late game, this can be a great way to keep ourselves safe from it on a build that primarily deals Poison Damage. This will also be incredibly useful for Infernalist Builds using Infernal Flame, giving an easy way to boost their Ignites frequently while removing a downside from using Infernal Flame.
Battershout
Battershout is an interesting Support gem that triggers a Physical Damage AoE from enemies within Warcry range if they have Broken Armour. This damage is equal to 50% of their Broken Armour with a More Multiplier of 4% per 50 Strength.
Seismic Cry can make the best use of this as it can be used on enemies without incurring a cooldown so long as it’s not hitting an enemy that is Heavy Stunned. We’d still need to use Armour Breaker or slap the Splinter support gem on a Physical Damage Skill to get consistent value out of it.
Perfection
Perfection is a support that granting the powerful Perfection damage buff when performing Perfect Timing on skills that allow for it. The damage increase applies to all skills, but will fall off after a short duration or when missing a Perfect Timing Window.
The limited pool of skills that can use this support make it harder to use. Especially when these skills also severely limit mobility. However, the Damage bonus can be worth getting and can make these skills, as well as others, significantly stronger.
New Unique Items
Four Unique Items have been teased so far: Prism Guardian, The Deepest Tower, Bringer of Rain, and The Hammer of Faith. All of these have potential, so let’s get into their details.
Prism Guardian
Prism Guardian is a Unique Shield that has a lot of potential to slot well into an Infernalist Minion Build, or builds that want to stack a ton of Maximum Life.
This is a fantastic Shield for any build, honestly, as it comes with a ton of Elemental Resistances and Dexterity i addition to the Spirit it cna provide. Even for most builds not running Chaos Innoculation, it’s still going to be granting anywhere 20-40 Spirit without insane gear, effectively granting an extra Aura.
The Deepest Tower
The Deepest Tower is a Unique Helmet that will make all nearby enemies count as being on Low Life. This has a lot of potential when combined with Support Gems like Execute for increased damage.
In terms of its stats, it’s not lacking much either, offering good Chaos Resistance and Maximum Life. Though most item bases that provide Armour are less than stellar at the current moment.
The Bringer of Rain
The Bringer of Rain is a Unique Helmet that allows Two-Handed Axes, Maces, and Swords to be used in One Hand. The trade-off here is not being able to use a Chest Armour, which can leave a huge gap in our defenses.
Despite its downside, having an Alternative to Giant’s Blood for dual-wielding Two-Handed Melee Weapons or using a Two-hander and a Shield is great. It even comes with Accuracy as well, which Strength-based Melee builds can often be lacking.
The Hammer of Faith
The Hammer of Faith is a Two-handed Mace that periodically grants Shrine Buffs. While these are granted at random, there are several exceptionally useful Shrine Buffs for increasing damage. Unfrotunately this does come with an Attack Speed penalty, but not a huge one.
One Synergy this could have is with the new Embitter Gem, which would effectively make the Tempest, Meteoric, and Gloom Shrines all increase Cold Damage, in addition to the Freezing Shrine. Considering these are all 50-100% “Damage as Extra” buffs, there is potential for these to stack for an insane amount of Cold Damage.
Endgame and Quality of Life Updates
To round off the post, we’ll cover the Endgame and Quality of Life changes that have been teased. We’re grouping these together as there are a fair number of them, but overall are slightly less interesting overall.
Weapon Lock
Weapoon Locking is a new feature that allows us to lock a weapon in place, using it in both Weapon Sets. It’s largely a Quality of Life system but has a high potential to be incredibly powerful.
The biggest potential this has is with the Weapon Set Passives. This makes it so we only need to farm out one strong weapon for a Build, rather than two unless we use two different weapons entirely. It makes it far easier to invest in a build that can excel at using Weapon Set passives.
Essence Improvements
Not only are Essences getting a more visually distinct look in Update 0.2.0, but it appears we’ll also be able to expect some for of Essences bosses, which appear to reward a selection of Greater Essences.
Greater Essences themselves have been ultra-rare, with most players ever only finding a small handful and having to trade for the specific ones they might need or want. Seeing that they might become more commonly available may also drastically improve crafting as a whole.
If this comes with further adjustment to Essences, giving them effects akin to the Essences of POE1 with access to special modifiers found only on new, rarer, essences, these may become even more worth hunting.
Atlas Passive Tree Expansion
All that was shown as part of this teaser is a single image, which show on section of the Atlas Passive Tree and how it was reworked to be more interesting.
Based on this image, there appear to be new nodes for Shrines and Strongboxes. Both of these are easily the worst endgame mechanics available, so here’s hoping these changes make them more interesting or useful.
Atlas Tower Improvements
Towers are getting a huge buff, and will be treated similarly to any other map on the Atlas. This means that they can gain the effects of Tablets from other Towers as well as spawns with bosses or other mechanics naturally.
While this makes them more rewarding in and of themselves, it also means they can end up eating the bonuses we’re trying to put on another map or group of maps. Though anything they spawn with naturally is just pure benefit.
I’d hope this also comes with some extra Atlas Tree support as well. It’d open a lot more potential up for making them more interesting.
